Lafayette could become the first municipality in Boulder County -- and quite possibly in the state -- to allow its elected leaders to attend council meetings and vote on ordinances without ever stepping into City Hall.

The Lafayette City Council is set to take up a resolution Tuesday night that would amend the council's handbook to allow members to attend council meetings remotely "by telephone, video or internet connection" under limited circumstances, such as a family emergency or a work conflict.

Councilman Pete D'Oronzio said with elected officials' busy schedules and demanding day jobs -- combined with high-quality teleconferencing technology that wasn't available even a few years ago -- the time has come to make remote attendance an option. The city discussed the idea two years ago, but it didn't gain enough traction to come to a vote.

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"We've got people on council who travel, and if this allows them to attend a meeting, that's a good thing," he said. "We've got the technology in place -- we should see if we can make it possible."

His job often calls him out of town to attend trade shows, but D'Oronzio said that doesn't mean he can't spare a few hours on a Tuesday evening to park himself in front of a videocamera and attend a council meeting from afar.

Lafayette Mayor Carolyn Cutler said she would likely have attended a meeting via videoconference a couple of years ago when a family emergency pulled her out of state for several weeks.

"When my mother was sick, I would have absolutely attended (remotely) one of the meetings I missed," she said.

But Cutler understands the concerns of those who think local democracy should unfold in plain public view, where residents can look their representatives in the eye and council members can sense the mood of the room and hear the grumblings of their constituents.

'Advocate of being there'

Last year, Windsor Mayor John Vazquez linked into town board work sessions by video when his job took him to a construction site in Nevada for an extended period of time. He marvels at the technology that allowed him to partake in the meetings and felt the arrangement kept him informed and in the loop.

"I was conducting business in a 21st-century environment," he said. "There's always room for 21st-century technology."

But Vazquez said he drew the line on remote participation when it came to actual town board meetings, where votes are cast and decisions are finalized.

"I'm an advocate of being there," Vazquez said. "I think it's important for board members to be there for actual votes. If all I see on video is my colleagues on the dais, how am I possibly going to know what's going on in the gallery?"

Windsor considered including remote attendance at town board meetings but eventually dropped the idea.

If remote attendance comes to pass in Lafayette, Cutler said it would be worth revisiting the policy in a year or so to ensure that it is working effectively.

"Is this doing what we want, and is it allowing council members to remotely participate -- not frivolously, but because something legitimate has come up?" the mayor said.

The resolution is written to guard against any council member whose goal it is to simply phone it in to avoid the messiness or drudgery of governing, D'Oronzio said.

The measure makes it clear that remote attendance "is intended to be an infrequent or occasional substitution for physical attendance" when special circumstances -- like an illness, a work obligation or a last-minute family obligation -- come into play.

The rules also maintain that a quorum of four council members must be physically present at City Hall for a meeting to go forward and that the meeting must be chaired by a council member who is in the room, not linked in electronically.

"It is not designed to allow a council member to miss a meeting when they want, but to allow a council member who is going to miss a meeting anyway to attend," D'Oronzio said.

Katie Fleming, associate director of Colorado Common Cause, said face-to-face interaction is always best in local government, but she said it's inevitable that people have begun to ask whether a technology that works so efficiently in private business might have civic applications, too.

As long as it isn't abused, she said, it can be a valuable tool for local elected bodies that struggle with absences from members trying to balance personal and professional lives with their civic responsibilities.

"We're kind of on the edge of a changing environment," she said.

Vote flip in Superior

Remote attendance might have led to a completely different result at a recent Superior Board of Trustees meeting when an ordinance that would have legalized sign spinning on sidewalks and street corners came up for a final vote.

In April, the board voted 4-3 to move the sign-spinning measure forward on a first reading. But last week, two trustees who favored the ordinance were absent, and the measure ended up going down to defeat 3-2 on a second reading.

Mayor Pro Tem Joe Cirelli even voiced some reservation before casting his vote, noting that the dual absences were having the effect of changing the will of the board majority. Allowing the trustees to attend the meeting by video would probably have led to a different outcome, he said.

"I think remote attendance would be super," Cirelli said. "I think it would be great to avoid that particular situation."

Sam Mamet, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said he is not aware of any other community in Colorado that allows remote attendance by council members or trustees, but he said if Lafayette's experiment with videoconferencing works out well, it may start a trend.

"It may cause other cities to say, 'Yeah, this has been a problem for us, too,' and give it a try," he said.

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